Tuesday, August 2, 2011

[Comic title: CIA; alt text: It was their main recruiting poster, hung nearly ten feet up a wall! This means the hackers have LADDER technology! Are we headed for a future where everyone has to pay $50 for one of those locked plexiglass poster covers? More after the break ...]

I'm getting mixed messages from this one (HENCE THE TITLE DID YOU SEE HOW I MADE THE TITLE RELEVANT TO THE POST you can love me now if you like). I mean, it's obviously more of Randy's smug "I'm smart and people who don't love computers like I do are dumb" bullshit, but it looks like he thinks that this time when people are misinformed it's their fault--this is "what normal people hear" versus "what computer enthusiasts hear," rather than "what the media is saying" versus "what is actually happening."

You may recall a particularly rapey comic about the bailout back when this economic crisis that launched XKCD Sucks to fame and fortune started. The implied threat of raping someone's daughter was directed at the media. But in this case the media doesn't appear to be at fault--though his usual "OMG MEDIA IS LYING ABOUT COMPUTORZZZZ" rage does appear in the alt text.

Since this comic is otherwise pretty boring--people are wrong sometimes! shocking!--I've decided to visit the forodes to see what they think.

There's some arguing about the analogy:

...it's not even that they tore down the poster, more like they got a whole bunch of people to stand in front of it so no one can see it. So basically we're talking about the digital equivalent of a sit-in.

There's some alarmism w/r/t people not understanding technical details of computing:

Yeah, I can definitely relate. People's reactions to the "situation" are often scarier than the situation itself. It troubles me that we live in a world so dependent on technology, yet very few people really understand it.

And some idiot who thinks that he has a solid grasp on the economy and wants to share with the class:

Love it. This is what I tend to hear with most news stories. "The economy is doomed" is usually translated to "we need to print more pretend money, but the guy in charge prefers not to devalue his hoarded millions" in my head.

But overall pretty boring. They're complaining about how the word "hacked" has become widespread, arguing about alt-text vs. title text for some reason, and generally being boring nerds arguing about stupid shit nobody cares about--something that never happens here on "XKCD Makes Me Profoundly Unhappy And I Am Learning A New Language Just So That I Can More Fully Describe The Depths Of My Despair."

When I see/hear the word 'hacker', the first thing that comes into mind is people like Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds, Ken Thomson, Dennis Ritchie, Stallman, Knuth, etc etc...When I read this comic, my imagination produced this in my mind:

hypothetical famed hacker wrote:...Damn, now I have to come up with something significant AGAIN in order to remind people that I'm a renowned expert in the field, so that I have the right to claim that I get this strip!

Better get to work, instead of tearing down other people's posters...

This computer enthusiast believes, or fantasizes, that famous computer people read XKCD and . . . I guess they think it's so brilliant that they want to go out there and remind everyone that they have sufficient credentials (and this fanboy seems to think you need credentials to understand XKCD) to appreciate its brilliance? That, in essence, Randy is so brilliant with his vast knowledge of computing that he makes luminaries of the computer science community act like retarded fanboys in order to prove they "get it."

You know, I don't think the whole world needs to know about your cancer story. It sucks, I know - most of us have had a relative or friend with cancer. Some of us have had cancer. A webcomic is probably not the place for this.

That sounds pretty cool, 10:09. Pooping away all day long, not a care in the world. Just walking along, emptying out the bag in your side as you pass a bin, humming a tune just living the sweet life. I'm gonna get one.

With all the buildup I expected dome portal/glados-style black humour punching me in the face. Instead I got "The parts of me that are holding me back". That is probably the weakest metaphor for cancer that I ever heard and makes it sound like a stubbed toe.

This could have been a dowerful device if he were of any use as a writer. But no, he waters it even further down with his utterly useless blathering about "relativistic particle cannons", the speed of the partices and ... killing horses? WTF?

It would be interesting if we could calculate a correlation between the amount of merchandise Randall sells and the amount of times he's mentioned cancer that week. If there's a correlation between this last and the severity of Megan's cancer, we could test for a correlation between Megan's suffering and Randall's profits. This is the sort of scientific experiment Randall gets off on, no?

Why do people keep saying the girl with cancer is Megan? The girl with cancer isn't Megan. Megan is the girl he loves and can never have. The girl with cancer is the girl he had to settle for. The girl he took to prove to Megan that he's able to move on, to show that he's well adjusted. And if he manages to convince her of such, well, hell, maybe one day she'll consider giving him a chance if (God forbid) he became a widower somehow.

933: Another "boohoocancer" strip with an unfunny punchline slapped onto it, with an extra serving of "omglazorsrawsum" alt-title. Entirely passable. One thing I don't get, though is what's comic!Randy's deal in here. Is he ashamed for having a tattoo or what?

I think some day after he's milked (pun intended) this cancer thing for all it's worth, he'll post something like "lol jkjk she doesn't have cancer! I don't even have a girl friend. Thanks for the sympathy, though."

Plus, whenever he touches on the Mystery Illness in the Family that is Now Cancer, he acts as if the very circumstance of coming down with a serious illness makes you a badass, and the worst part, the absolute worst, is when he does this and tries to wax poetic at the same time.

Because he really, really sucks at this. Case in point: "Grope for comfort before life's slings and arrows"

Seriously though people are shooting at you and reacting like somebody's hogging the covers means you're turning to religion out of weakness. So someone who voluntarily gets a tattoo for whatever reason can never be as badass as a person who got sick and could afford treatment.

I thought 933 was referring to her heart in a "haha I'm so angsty and my emooootions are preventing me from being a productive member of society so i got a tattoo over my heart so that they know where to remove iiiit" and I was all totally behind it in a "that's kind of a cute angsty way to shove it to that douche" way, but then I reread it and realized she said "oncologist" and I was all, oh Randy we get it =[.

For treatment, did you get those little radioactive pellets placed in a tiny satchel attached to a harness strapped on an adventurous gerbil that likes to race through toilet-tube sized tunnels to ones nether regions?

This guy hates tattoos. I'm not exactly all for them myself, but this is a bit much:

>Most tattoos are shallow and meaningless. [...] If you think their tattoo is stupid, you probably think they're stupid, and you should probably put your pants on and go, because it'll be really awkward later on.

Besides that, people have been sharing their own radiotherapy stories. One guy only got two dots. Someone else got eight. There's GOOMH potential there, even though no one's actually said it.

Personally, I think the worst of the cancer is over if Randall is okay with writing/joking about it. Megan's finished her radiotherapy, and right now they're at the 'Will it come back in a few years?' phase described in 931.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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